Narrow Results

Mesh adaptation is a reliable and effective method to improve the precision of flow simulation with computational fluid dynamics. Mesh refinement is a common technique to simulate steady flows. In order to dynamically optimize the mesh for transient flows, mesh coarsening is also required to be involved in an iterative procedure. In this paper, we propose a robust mesh adaptation method, both refinement and coarsening included. A data structure of $k$-way tree is adopted to save and access the parent–children relationship of mesh elements. Local element subdivision is employed to refine mesh, and element mergence is devised to coarsen mesh. The unrefined elements adjacent to a refined element are converted to polyhedrons to eliminate suspending points, which can also prevent refinement diffusing from one refined element to its neighbors. Based on an adaptation detector for vortices recognizing, the mesh adaptation was integrated to simulate the unsteady flow around a tri-wedges. The numerical results show that the mesh zones where vortices located are refined in real time and the vortices are resolved better with mesh adaptation.

Two dimensional hypersonic magnetohydrodynamics(MHD) flows with the chemical non-equilibrium effects are numerically simulated using upwind splitting scheme based on unstructured meshes. The governing equations are 2D MHD equations with the chemical components, where 5 species and 17 chemical reactions are considered. The AUSM scheme is implemented in the spatial discretization for the MHD equations, and an explicit 5-stage Runge-Kutta scheme is used for time integration. A loosely coupled approach is used to communicate between the MHD equations and the chemical reaction model. The computational model is a 2D blunt body, around which a dipole magnetic field is located. With hypersonic incoming flows, four different cases are numerically simulated to analyze the effects caused by the magnetic field and/or non-equilibrium chemical reactions. Numerical results are obtained and compared well with available data.

This paper describes a new computational method of fully automated anisotropic triangulation of a trimmed parametric surface. Given as input: (1) a domain geometry and (2) a 3×3 tensor field that specifies a desired anisotropic node-spacing, this new approach first packs ellipsoids closely in the domain by defining proximity-based interacting forces among the ellipsoids and finding a force-balancing configuration using dynamic simulation. The centers of the ellipsoids are then connected by anisotropic Delaunay triangulation for a complete mesh topology. Since a specified tensor field controls the directions and the lengths of the ellipsoids' principal axes, the method generates a graded anisotropic mesh whose elements conform precisely to the given tensor field.

The parallel, unstructured-mesh SWAN model has been employed to study a tidal inlet with complex bathymetry in the Dutch Wadden Sea. The unstructured grid resolves the large-scale, O(1km) wave dynamics in the open sea whereas employing 15-20m grid-resolution over the tidal basins and flats to gain an insight of surf breaking, local wind-wave and wave-current interactions and to assess the performance of SWAN through hindcasts of storm events. Previous studies and the present study show that the default source term settings routinely underestimate the low-frequency peak energy in the wind-sea part of the spectrum and the finite-depth wave growth over nearly horizontal beds. High-resolution simulations have indicated that the accuracy is directly affected by parameterization of bottom friction, whitecapping dissipation and depth-induced wave breaking.